DAIS (Data/AI Shell) - Side Project Idea for Solo Developers

The Problem (Pain Level: 4/10) Developers experience friction when navigating large directories and files in the terminal: Basic ls command is useless with thousands of files Finding the right file requires combining find and grep File content preview is cumbersome Understanding dataset structure is difficult A niche pain point, but a real problem for power users. Target Market Global CLI Power Users - Estimated TAM $200M Developers who work terminal-first Data scientists, ML engineers DevOps/SRE engineers Linux/Mac power users What is DAIS (Data/AI Shell)? A CLI tool that adds AI-powered file analysis and intelligent navigation to the existing ls command. ...

January 25, 2026 · 2 min · Young

QRY: A CLI Tool That Writes SQL from Natural Language

The Problem: SQL Writing is Tedious Developers and analysts work with databases daily. But: Hard to remember complex JOIN syntax Confusing subqueries, window functions, and advanced SQL Context switching between checking table structures and writing queries “How did I write that query again?” happens repeatedly The Solution: QRY - Natural Language to SQL CLI QRY is a CLI tool that generates SQL from natural language in your terminal. $ qry "top 10 users with most purchases in the last 7 days" > Connecting to mydb... > Generated SQL: SELECT u.name, u.email, COUNT(o.id) as order_count FROM users u JOIN orders o ON u.id = o.user_id WHERE o.created_at >= NOW() - INTERVAL '7 days' GROUP BY u.id, u.name, u.email ORDER BY order_count DESC LIMIT 10; [Execute? (y/n)] Core Features Natural Language → SQL: Claude/GPT-based conversion Schema Awareness: Auto-detect connected DB table structures Execution Option: Run generated queries directly History: Save and reuse previous queries Multi-DB Support: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, etc. Market Analysis NLP Market Status Total NLP market: $42B → $791B projected growth CAGR: 10.92% 72% of businesses plan to adopt NLP technologies Competitive Landscape Solution Type Features BigQuery NL Cloud built-in GCP lock-in Cloud SQL AI Cloud built-in GCP lock-in Bytebase SaaS Team collaboration focus QRY CLI tool Local, lightweight, free Market Gap Cloud providers offer built-in NL-to-SQL, but: ...

January 24, 2026 · 3 min · Young